BT – These Hopeful Machines

Oh, BT. Such memories of BT. All great ones might I add. The first note of BT’s that I ever heard was his collaboration with Tori Amos, “Blue Skies”. I can’t remember where I was or who spun it, but I remember standing in a vast warehouse wondering how Tori Amos could be pumping from these speakers. It. Was. Glorious.

BT is one of those artists who is actually an artist. The man has a musical technique named after him, his own software, six studio albums, numerous collaborations, and a plethora of movie and video game scores. His sheer volume of work is astounding, especially considering the quality. A lot of the time when an artist has that magnitude of work, some of it’s bound to be crap.

Well, not the case with BT. This newest album, These Hopeful Machines was released on Tuesday and musically, it’s awesome. It’s just a natural progression when you consider his previous albums. While These Hopeful Machines returns to the clubs after the break that was This Binary Universe, it absolutely has that element of ambiance.

It’s got dance floor stomping tracks like, “Suddenly” and “The Emergency”, the drowsy beats of “Every Other Way”, and the shockingly different cover of The Psychedelic Furs, “The Ghost in You”. This album has a wide variety of sounds for your listening pleasure. Based on the music alone, This album would have gotten and A. Unfortunately, the vocals make me want to bleed from my ears.

Thankfully, there’s two solely instrumental tracks (one per album on this dual disc set), “The Rose of Jericho” and “La Nocturne de Lumiere” to stop the screeching, whiny vocals. It’s a damn shame, really. It’s not BT’s voice that I mind so much, and honestly I find it very refreshing that he does do his own vocals, but where he gets some of these women for the female vocals just beats the hell out of me. All in all, I’m still going to give it a B because, musically, it’s a marvelous album. They just need to shut the hell up and let the music happen.